SPECIAL ORDERS
HDQRS. DEPT. OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA,

No. 89. Rapidan, March 27, 1862.

Brigadier General Charles W. Field, P. A. C. S., will report for duty to Major General G. W. Smith, commanding Aquia District.

By command of General Johnston:

A. P. MASON,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

HEADQUARTERS,
Richmond, Va., March 27, 1862.

Major General J. B. MAGRUDER,

Commanding Department of the Peninsula, Yorktown, Va.:

GENERAL: Your letter of the 24th instant to the honorable Secretary of War has been referred to General Lee, who directs me to say that the Fourteenth Regiment Alabama Volunteers left this city this morning for Yorktown to join your command, and that the unarmed regiment from the same State (Twenty-sixth) will leave here to-morrow, also to join you, and by you be armed.

The general instructs me to add that he has been informed by the Secretary of the Navy that the Virginia is now about ready to come out, but the exact day when she will move is not known to him.

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

W. H. TAYLOR,

Assistant Adjutant-General.

ENGINEER BUREAU,

Richmond, March 27, 1862.

Captain JOHN J. CLARKE,

P. A. C. S., Engineer in Charge Mulberry Island Point:

DEAR SIR: It seems almost needles to urge upon you the vigorous prosecution of the works at Mulberry Point, but I do so at the suggestion of General Lee, who thinks it a matter of paramount importance. I received to-day a telegram from General Magruder to the effect that he had directed you to place the 42 and 68 pounders in barbette in the work surrounding Crafford's house. In this, from the lights before me, I should think the general probably right. The work on the point can then be prosecuted untrammeled by guns in position.

I sent you to-day 1,000 sand bags, and you will receive with this letter the first installment of bolts for the casemate battery. I have been trying in vain, so far, to procure wrought-iron protection for the embrasures, but think that I have succeeded to-day in making a plan and procuring flat-bar railroad iron from the Richmond and Danville Railroad Company which will be perfectly satisfactory. A tracing will be sent to you to-morrow. I shall write a note this evening to Colonel Gorgas, requesting him to send you immediately a 6.4-inch rifle gun, 64-pounder columbiad pattern, with barbette carriage pintle-block, which is here on hand complete. One casemate carriage will be finished this week and five the next, if promises may be relied on.

General Lee is particularly desirous that all your unmounted guns should be mounted immediately, and in the present state of affairs I do not think you can do better than to mount them all in the covering works around Crafford's house. Of that, however, you will probably be the best judge.